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Movie Review – Triple Frontier

TL;DR – While it has all the components for a good film, it feels like it is spending more of its time imitating than driving its own course.

Score – 2.5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Review –

This is an interesting time for the action films, there are spaces where it is
showing brand new filmmaking techniques,
films that build tension as I have never
seen, or simply shots where you go, how did they get that? Unfortunately, today
I am not looking at a film like that, because today we review one of the most
paint-by-numbers films I have seen in a very long time.

So the set the scene, we open in Colombia where Pope (Oscar Isaac) works as an ‘independent
observer’ helping the local police take down one of the local drug cartels.
While there he becomes friendly with a local informant Yovanna (Adria Arjona)
who lets him know how to get to Gabriel Martin Lorez (Reynaldo Gallegos) the
local big bad. This is not a mission that he can pull off alone, nor does he
want to involve the locals because they might tip his hand. So instead, he goes
back to the States to recruit his old military Special Forces team. Redfly (Ben
Affleck) now sells condos … badly and can barely keep his head above water
after the divorce, Ironhead (Charlie Hunnam) spends all his time giving talks
to military trainees, and his brother Ben (Garrett Hedlund) is now an MMA fighter, and Catfish (Pedro Pascal) can
no longer fly planes after an incident. Together they go down to provide expert
reconnaissance, and maybe a bit more than just that.

There is a good cast here. Image Credit: Netflix.

Now
well, I am going to be a bit negative or at least a bit meh about this film, it
doesn’t mean that it is all a mess. Most of this film is shot on location and
that does give the film a texture that you just don’t often see. As well as
this, the whole first action sequence was really well constructed slowly
building up to that moment the first gunshot ricochets out into the day. There
is a strong cast here and props to the person who finally went that Charlie
Hunnam and Garrett Hedlund could be brothers and they also did a good job of
making these guys feel like old friends. Now while I did feel a little disappointed,
overall at least most of this film is competently constructed so it has at
least that going for it.

Where the film does quite come together is in the story that just feels like it
lost something in the translation from page to screen. Everything about the
start of the film is showing us that while they are old and we can see it, they
are competent professionals that know what they are doing. Which means that
there is a disconnect because everything goes wrong because they are not acting
like professionals. Now I get that they were making it out that greed makes
even the strongest people fall, and that seems to be the message they were
going with, but it is really poorly presented. As well as this, it feels out of
character that they would be in a house with holes in the wall and not expect
to be caught out with an ambush. To add with this, I am sure they meant for Ben
Affleck’s character to come off as tired but he feels less tired and more board
and it really shows. This combined with wild shifts in tone and demeanour makes
it feel like they didn’t know what to do with his character and this also flows
into some of the other key players in the team.

They unfortunately don’t seem to know what to do with Ben Affleck’s character. Image Credit: Netflix.

At
times it really does feel like the film
is holding back when it really shouldn’t. Take at the start when Ben is introduced
as this MMA fighter. There is the whole long scene as we get closer and closer to
the fight, we see the potential outcome, and at the first punch, we cut to the next scene. It also does
not help, that this feels less like a film clearing its own path through the
jungle, and more like one that is following, down to the letter, the path of
those who have come before. Every aspect of the film feels like this, you have
the old guys going for one last stand, fights over the money, everything going
wrong and now they are hiking through the jungle, etc. One clear inspiration that
they were taking notes from is Sicario.
You feel it in the story, you feel it in the action, you feel it in the tone
they were going for, and hell you can even hear it in the musical score. This
along with everything else I mentioned lead to me really not caring at all that
much about the characters by the end, which is never a good sign.

In the end, do we recommend Triple Frontier?
Well look we really feel it is a bit meh. It is a film that is competently made
so you are not really seeing a bad film per se,
but then it is also an uninspired film, so you won’t see anything that goes
above mediocre for most of its run time. You know, maybe it is just unlucky
that this came out in the same week as Hotel
Mumbai, but even without that, I don’t think I would have had a more positive
outlook on it. It felt like there was a lot of potential here, but somewhere
along the way it got lost and we ended up with its shadow instead.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow
Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV,
he’ll be talking about International Relations,
or the Solar System.

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